Yahoo closes GeoCities: how the web lost millions of home pages
Yahoo bought GeoCities for billions in 1999 and switched it off a decade later. The closure became a turning point for web preservation.
THE 2009 STORY
Topic
The web of the 2000s was a churn of portals, home-page builders, wikis and search engines. Some became the infrastructure we use daily; others, like GeoCities, closed and took millions of pages with them.
Yahoo bought GeoCities for billions in 1999 and switched it off a decade later. The closure became a turning point for web preservation.
After a false biography made headlines in late 2005, Wikipedia restricted new article creation and introduced semi-protection.